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The Liebster Award 2017 is an award that exists only on the internet, and is given to bloggers by other bloggers. The earliest case of the award goes as far back as 2011. Liebster in German means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome.

I was nominated by cmofhappiness aka Sylveran Noirterel, thank you!! Sylveran’s Why Asexuals Belong To LGBT+is a very well researched and thought out piece on why asexuals belong in the LGBT+ community, which I very recommend that you read, especially if you are not well educated on the history of the asexual community and the oppression that we’ve faced.

Since I’ve been nominated for this award it means I have to answer the questions that I’ve been given so:

1. What made you start your blog?

The reason why I started my blog was when I was figuring out I was asexual I felt very alone in my discovery and I felt like there was no one who really understood what I was going through, especially as someone who figured out during their first relationship (the same goes for figuring out I was aromantic). And due to this loneliness I felt I decided to create a blog to hopefully help people who might be in the same situation as me by sharing my story as well as talking about other asexual and LGBTQ+ issues that I feel I can talk about (i.e. my aromanticism and being nonbinary)

2. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I would change my physical appearance to look less feminine as I’m often misgendered because of the way I look.

3. Favourite childhood memory?

This is actually really hard to answer because I have a terrible memory. I think my definite answer would be either having the opportunity of meeting my favourite band in person and/or being able to experience their music whilst they were on tour (which turned out to be their last tour). That band (The Wanted) have a special place in my heart because they helped me through tough times. And these two memories are some I cherish still to this day.

4. 5 things about yourself that you like?

I love how unapologetically and confident I’ve become with my aroace identity.

I like that I can now talk about my experiences as an aroace person openly and help people because of it.

In terms of my appearance I like that I wear glasses.

I like the passion that I have for my hobbies, and that even if someone says something bad about them it won’t stop me from enjoying them.

I like how confident I’m becoming in both my blog writing and my fictional writing.

5. Your thoughts on forgiveness?

I think you should forgive people if they deserve it. If someone has apologised for hurting you and they sincerely mean it then you should think about forgiving them. But if that person either isn’t very sincere or they’ve hurt you really badly then it’s okay to not forgive them. Your happiness comes first.

6. Would you turn back time?

Honestly I don’t think I would. I feel like I’m where I need to be at the moment, and anything that has happened in the past has lead me to this day. Plus if I turned back time it would mean re-experiencing bad times, and not knowing much about myself that I’ve learned over the years.

7. If you could travel anywhere, which place would you choose?

I’ve always wanted to travel to Australia but I know I wouldn’t be able to handle the heat, since I can barely handle the heat here in England. But I would also like to revisit Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida because I really enjoyed my time there but we didn’t get to experience it as much as I would have liked to (we were in Universal for two nights, three days before going back to the place we were staying).

8. Your (bad) habits?

I bite my nails, it’s something I’ve done all my life. I also find that when I’m using a pen I either bite the lid or I fidget with it. I think most of these are due to nerves or stress (probably both). Another one that might be good to mention is that I can get irritated and angrily easy, it’s not something I’m proud of but that’s apart of me.

9. Where do you wish yourself to be in 10 years?

I wish to be happy in life in every way shape and form, happy with the way I look, happy with the job I have, happy just overall. I hope that I’ll have my novel(s) finished and hopefully published. I definitely hope that I’ve moved out during that time. But we’ll see.

10. What do you hate?

This is probably bad but I hate a lot of things (it goes with the fact I’m easily annoyed) but things I really hate is the gatekeeping (in the LGBTQ+ Community) and shipping culture (that excludes/forgets aromantic people exist) that I’ve seen around social media sites (especially Tumblr). I think because of the fact we’re all talking online it’s easy to forget that there’s real people with real feelings behind a screen.

Imagine living in a world where you only experience colour when you touch your soulmate. Imagine in this world the word soulmate is only viewed as a romantic soulmate. And now imagine finding out that you are aromantic.

At first you start to understand yourself over why you haven’t found your soulmate yet. And then you start to realise that there may never come a time that you’ll experience colours. And because of that you start to hate yourself because you wonder what the colours actually look like. You want to experience colours.

As years go by you begin to accept yourself, you’ve realised you’ve lived so long without colours that it’s okay that you won’t experience them. Because you don’t know what you’re “missing out” on because you’ve never seen them. You start to love yourself, you begin to love and accept yourself so much, forgetting about the world and their so called colours.

One day you wake up and you see a flicker of something you’ve never seen before. At first you think it’s just your eyes playing tricks on you. But as the day goes on something gets brighter, the world gets more beautiful. And then you understand something. You’ve begun to see the world in colour. But you live alone, you never touch anyone, so you ask yourself how? how is this happening?

And then you understand. You love yourself. You have accepted yourself in every way, shape and, form. You love being aromantic, and you accepted that maybe you’d never see colours. But because of that, because you learned to love yourself for who you truly are, you became your own soulmate. So slowly each colour seeped through the black and white world and made your world bright and beautiful. Not that it wasn’t beautiful before. But there was something special in the colours that you suddenly became to see. It was the colours that showed you acceptance. And surprisingly enough love.

You accepted yourself as aromantic, so so did the world. And so you understood that being your own soulmate is something special.

NOTE: This was originally posted on my Tumblr and can also be found on my AO3. The reason why I’ve decided to post it on more than one platform is because I want more aromantic people to see it, plus I know people find it easier to read things on different social media platforms. I was also maybe thinking of adapting many soulmate AUs into aro friendly soulmate AUs as a series (don’t quote me on this though). Also lowkey the reason for posting it here is because I needed something to post and the blog posts I started I wasn’t feeling them.

It’s probably strange of me to write a post like this but honestly this erasure has given me such a learning curve as an aroace person and I thought you know what I want to shed some light in a sad and angry situation.

Obviously there’s some negatives to this erasure so I’m going to share those first. And then end on the positives.

Some people just don’t care. I can speak first hand that a majority of people don’t care, I’ve seen the reaction of people when I’ve had to unfollow dozens of people on a variety of different social media sites as well as going in the tags to block aphobic people. When you know people have seen your hurt and anger but are still choosing to ignore it, it really does hurt. It tells us that you don’t care about our struggles, our pain. The fact people don’t care takes me back to the fact that asexuality and specifically aromanticism are “invisible” identities which leads into my next point…

Lack of education. Without Tumblr I don’t know if I’d ever would have come across the terms “aromantic” and/or “asexual” because there’s so many things that we aren’t taught because of this heteronormative world. Similarly to what I’ve said above the lack of education on both aromanticism and asexuality is very obvious in the writers and the actor who is playing Jughead. Because throughout the past months many of them have said very invalidating and aphobic things, and it feeds off to the fandom, which use it against us. When an actor who was on our side with our representation turns against us we see it, the Riverdale fandom sees it and then we see that people are against us. And that they want us to experience that pain. If they don’t know much information on an aroace person’s experiences then they won’t know how much it is damaging when it comes to their writing. And because of the lack of education they flip our criticism and our want to educate into us being called “haters” and feeding off “discourse” when none of that is true. If the writers, and actors listened to the criticism, read through the #AroAceJugheadOrBust tag, read our threads they’d understand how much hurt we are suffering because of it.

Our voices should be heard but are being ignored. I still remember that moment when we found out that the writers knew about asexual Jughead (not sure if they knew about aromantic Jughead but they probably did) and that one of the writer’s knew the comic writer who finally gave the name “asexual” to a character who has been portrayed as such for years. I remember that anger that built up inside me, there’s most likely a post on this blog that I made about it. Why should we be heard? Because a show shouldn’t be allowed to cause this must hurt without a good reasoning or message. You know what the aroace erasure is telling me, especially with putting Jughead in a relationship with Betty? It tells me that I’m invalid, that I’m broken and need fixing. And how do I fix myself? I do that by putting myself in a relationship. That’s the message Riverdale is giving off to many aroaces. Break your boundaries, force yourself into a romantic relationship you don’t want. Sorry to burst your bubble Riverdale writers but I’ve done it in the past and it’s not great. It’s terrible. It’s damaging and dangerous especially for the aroace people.

Onto the (somewhat?) positives because even through this darkness there has been some light, surprisingly and I feel like my blog posts have been mostly talking about the hurt and anger of this situation (which is valid) but I want to talk about the positives because I wouldn’t be here without these positive parts of this situation. The positives aren’t really directly from Riverdale itself more so of the people I’ve surrounded myself with because of what Riverdale is doing.

Our pain, our anger, our disappointment is valid. This one I went back and forth with whether or not to put it under negatives or positives. Because the first half of the sentence is negative but the fact that I’m saying that it’s valid is a positive. Because it is a positive. We are allowed to be angry, we are allowed to be hurt and disappointed because they’ve taken such an iconic character from us and turned him into something he isn’t. Speaking for myself when discovering I was aroace Jughead was one of the few characters I found out was like me. And I used knowing this as validation. Because if the people around you aren’t accepting you there’s someone out there who does. There is other people out there like you. And that’s okay. This iconic character is aromantic and asexual just like you. You are valid. So the pain we are feeling, it’s okay to feel it, to embrace it, to share our stories to show the importance of the meaning of this character. All of it is okay. (I feel like I may have used “okay” a little too much here).

It’s made me stronger. Before this situation, especially if it happened when i was first figuring out I was aromantic and asexual, it probably would’ve broken me. Depending on where I was in my life I am grateful that it’s happened now rather than before. It’s made me realise that it’s okay to share my story as an aroace person and how this situation could affect aroace people badly because of the way a character who is like us has been twisted for a show. I now longer fear that this situation will get worse, I have a way to channel my anger and my sadness of the situation and I have the strength to overcome it and share it. This blog is evidence of my strength.

It’s made me more confident in finding good representation. I used to just cling to any representation that I could find even if it was harmful. But Riverdale’s twisted erasure has shown me that instead of looking for the bad I need to look for the good and that means looking elsewhere. It means finding #ownvoices books, and supporting actual aroace/ace/aro authors, who care about us being represented and wanting to share our story. Because of this situation I’ve started to read so many good books that have real and healthy representations of aro characters, ace characters, and aroace characters. And it’s a great way to feel so validated and loved because of this amazing work that people are doing with sharing their experiences through their characters.

It’s made me more confident in my own story writing. If you didn’t know for a whilst now I’ve actually been writing my own novel. This novel in fact has an aromantic asexual lead character. And this situation has given me a boost of energy to get my novel finished and out there, so that there is good representation and that my story, my experiences are heard. Because if you’re going to take away characters who represent me I’m going to make my own. For every aroace character who is straightwashed, or stripped of his/her/they/etc aromantic identity I will write another aroace, aro, or ace character to full my anger. Through writing a story with an aroace main I’ve been able to address so much that I couldn’t address before in the right words through my story telling and my characters. And it truly has made me feel better. I can take this situation, twist and bend it a little and have my characters react to it.

It’s brought me closer to both the aro and ace communities. I kind of felt like an outsider when it came to the aro and ace communities because I didn’t really know anyone and I was fairly new to discovering that I was aroace. But because of the erasure I’ve talked to so many aro/ace/aroace people who also share the pain and hurt of this situation and it’s helped me see and understand the amount of people are in our communities and that are hurt because of this situation.

It showed me who my real friends are. What I mean by this is that it’s showed me who exactly cares about the fact that a character that is like me is being stripped of everything he should be. And how much they care that it’s giving me a lot of hurt. Obviously I can’t stop any of my friends from watching a show but it’s shown me if they’d rather support an aphobic show or support their friend. If they’ve been there for me, and are helping out with the #AroAceJugheadOrBust campaign and if they are pointing out to other people that this cannot stand. It has really shown me who out of my friends care more about their shipping “rights” over their friend who this situation is making xir feel invalid most of the time.

It showed me who are both indirectly and directly aphobic. It’s probably ironic that this and my next point are on this list because both are probably for a lot of people are going to seem negative but for me they’re not. Why? Because I don’t want aphobic people in my life. Understanding the difference between indirect and direct aphobia has started to become more clear because of this situation. And direct aphobia is when people actively ship Jughead romantically with any character, even when aroaces have told them that their ship is aphobic and they’ve chosen to ignore it. Indirect aphobia is basically if the person is unaware of the situation and ships Jughead romantically “harmlessly”. You’re probably thinking how can someone not know about this especially with how much I’ve talked about it or other people have. It’s sadly quite simple. They don’t follow enough aros, aces, and aroaces who are speaking up about the erasure. Or if they follow just me, for example, they don’t see it because of timezones, or their Tumblr dash or Twitter timeline is so full that they never get a chance to see it.

It showed me who is specifically arophobic. As I’ve spoken about in previous posts it’s taken me a lot longer to accept being aromantic than it did being asexual. And through this situation I’ve realised how many people are more accepting of Jughead being asexual than him being aromantic. Because of their shipping “rights”. The reason why this is on my positive list is because I don’t want aphobic people, especially arophobic people in my life or anywhere near me. Having struggled with internalised arophobia for at least a year and finally overcoming it I don’t need to see people who are like “Jughead can still be asexual even if he’s with Betty” or some other shit excuse like that and deliberately ignoring and erasing Jughead’s aromanticism. I know exactly who I should and shouldn’t follow (and who I should block) when it comes to social media (my Tumblr life is so much more fun now that I no longer follow anyone who posts Riverdale and now that I’ve blocked (mostly) everyone in the romantic!Jughead ship tags).

I’ve probably repeated myself a million and one times not just in this blog alone but repeating stuff I’ve said before but the reason for that is because there are certain things that need to be addressed, that are so important that people need to know but aren’t listening too. It’s why many of us are saying the same things over and over again but in different ways.

If you want to know more about this situation please follow more aroaces. Boost our voices. And let us be heard. Don’t allow Riverdale or any other show *cough* Shadowhunters *cough* get away with aroace erasure (in Shadowhunters case just aromantic erasure). Because this hurts a lot of us.

Fair warning this one is going to be full of anger, sarcasm and swear words. This is mostly a rant to be honest. Trigger warning: A LOT of aphobia.

Every time something happens I tell myself “it can’t get any worse than this” and to my shock and amazement something worse happens. And this time this article by TeenVogue. An interview of Cole Sprouse about his character Jughead. And what has sparked this update is this section of the article:

“Jughead is 16 going on 17 (as of episode 10),” Cole wrote. “Sexuality is fluid. And where his sexuality is headed has, already, been heavily discussed…Riverdale is a new universe, and we first need to think of Jughead as a human agent within his environment, his decisions about his sexuality are going to be informed by his upbringing and his immediate and longterm desires. Betty and Jughead’s coupling are a great example of such an informed decision.”

Let’s start off with the fact that in the beginning Cole was fighting for us, he even said that this part of Jughead’s character is important and should be shown. And now he’s saying this?! What aphobic bullshit is this?! Because what Cole said above is quite long I’ve decided to break it into parts because each section makes me angry in a different way.

First the aphobia and just blatant queerphobia in “Jughead is 16 going on 17”. This implies that being 16 or 17 is too young to know for certain what your sexuality is if you aren’t straight. The heteronormativity and amatonormativity in these couple of words are enough to boil my anger. How comes is okay to know for certain that you are straight when you’re 16 or 17 but if you’re figuring out you’re queer you’re suddenly “too young”. If I had the words aromantic and asexual I probably would’ve identified as them since I was probably 13/14. But because I didn’t I suffered through a lot of hurt and pain. Feeling broken. Not understanding who I was.

“Sexuality is fluid” I really love how sexuality being fluid only comes up when talking about a character who is or might be queer. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this come up when a character is straight. It’s only when people see them and headcanon them as queer or if they are queer. Yes sexuality is fluid in some cases. But it’s not for Jughead. Jughead is aroace. He is touch adverse and he is romance repulsed. He has been for years. This is no excuse for this aroace erasure or aphobia.

“Riverdale is a new universe” THIS IS NO EXCUSE FOR AROACE ERASURE. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again if Jughead was gay the writers would have kept him that way. That outcry would have gotten this show cancelled in the first two weeks. This excuse means nothing. You don’t suddenly get to use that “it’s an adaption” excuse because you don’t want to play a character who you don’t understand. I’m so annoyed and shocked that this is okay with so many people. I just can’t see how they can’t see that this is so damaging. When has it ever been okay to change a queer character’s identity in the adaptation. NEVER until now. Just because being aromantic and asexual is lesser known and “more invisible” to a lot of people does not make this okay! It will never be okay.

“We first need to think of Jughead as a human agent” oh what lovely dehumanisation of aro, ace, and aroace people we have here. It’s not like I’ve not seen this before. Are you serious right now. Was Jughead not human before? Was aroace Jughead not human? Was he an alien? Was he a vampire? This is news to me. This is what amatonormativity it tells sex and romance is “what makes us human” and if we don’t experience it well boy do I have news for you, we are no longer human. I’m so infuriated with this sentence alone. Stab me in the heart it would heartless…oh wait…what heart? I mustn’t have a heart because I’m not human right? Fuck you.

“His decisions about his sexuality are going to be informed by his upbringing and his immediate and longterm desires” WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN?! “By his upbringing” what bullshit is this? “his longterm desires”. The only desires Jughead should have is for eating burgers. Anything else is aphobic. Jughead has never shown interest in anyone or anything but burgers. I don’t understand how Jughead’s upbringing could affect his sexuality, especially his aroaceness. I swear if they are going to do the “his only aroace because he hasn’t met the one, and he closed himself off to romance because of his troubled past and didn’t want to go through what his parents did” (and what I mean here is experiencing his parents having a divorce) I’m going to flip. I’ve seen this so many times. Being closed off to romance and being aroace isn’t the same thing!

“Betty and Jughead’s coupling are a great example of such an informed decision” well this is just the icing on the cake isn’t it? The aphobia, the erasure, the amatonormativity, just I can’t put it into words. You know what Bughead is? Bughead is a great example of aphobic writers taking a character they know is aromantic, asexual, touch adverse and romance repulsed, stripping him of everything he is and forcing him into a relationship because they are so aphobic that they can’t see that not everyone, not every character, needs romance to “be human” and to be happy. It’s a great example of how much hurt they can bring to two communities because of a damn ship. It’s great example of stripping one of the few characters like me and telling me you know what we don’t like you like this, this is how you should be. Bughead is a great example of dehumanisation of aromantic people. Bughead is great example of heternormativity. Bughead is a great example of dehumanisation of friendships.

On a last note ALLIES WHERE ARE YOU? Why are you supporting this show that is giving us so much hurt? Why are you allowing it to carry on and have another season? Why are you not speaking up about this erasure? Why are you shipping Bughead? Or Jughead with any character for that matter? Why are you only speaking up about the Beronica queerbaiting but not the queer erasure? Why are you not here when aros and aces need you the most? Why don’t you care?!Continue reading →

I understand that the majority of things that I will discuss are probably things that alloromantic people may not realise are harmful towards aromantic people. I’ll be discussing various ways within and outside the queer community where aromantic people are often dehumanised. And I hope that it will educate someone on harmful things that dehumanise aromantic people. A lot of points I’ll be making will be repetition of things I’ve said in previous posts but I feel I need to emphasis them once again.

I want to start off within our own community, many of us (not all) are also apart of the asexual community or aromantic people have found safety and safe spaces within the asexual community, even if they are not because sometimes our communities intersect. There’s a common theme I’ve seen amongst some asexual, whom are alloromantic. I’ve noticed that allo aces who emphasise their romantic attraction to allo queer people or to allo cis straight people to say “look I date too I’m just like you”, “look I fall in love I’m ~human~”. That in itself should explain how this dehumanises aromantic people, especially those who don’t date.

My next point connects with the point above where people say romantic love is what makes us human. That not falling in love is the worst thing that could ever happen to someone. And that being single until you die is a ~bad~ thing. I’ve noticed that characters, especially female characters, are branded as unrelatable because they haven’t been in a romantic or sexual relationship. By saying romance makes us human you are telling people who don’t experience romantic attraction and don’t want to be in a romantic relationship that they are not human, that they have no reason to live because they won’t experience the “epicness” that is this version of love. It gives off the impression that you believe that romantic love is the meaning to life and that people who don’t experience romantic attraction or don’t want to date have no meaning in life.

I think by now mostly is aware of people viewing platonic relationships as lesser than romantic relationships, and the damages it can do to not just aromantic people. I’ve talked about this many times before both on this blog and on other social network platforms but I can’t stress this enough about how damaging this is. As an aromantic person my friendships are my world, they are my strength. They are a source of happiness for me. It links with the idea that most people view soulmates as romantic. For me my soulmate(s) are my friends. The people I feel I can trust with 100% of myself, that I can go to no matter what. My friendships are just as important as a romantic relationship is shown to be. Your friends are most likely going to be there for you your whole life, romantic love can come and go but your friends are there through thick and thin (most of the time. Value your friends as much as you value your partner. Friendships, both good and bad, have probably shaped you as much as your partner has.

In addition to this, the idea that everyone wants to get married (romantically). I feel like this idea is “taught” to us at a young age. When I was younger I always wanted to get married because that’s what I was told I should want but as I grew older I began to understand that no this isn’t what I want. I want to be surrounded by my friends. Marriages are great, but they aren’t for me. And it shouldn’t be taught to kids that this is something you should aim for in life, because that child doesn’t really know what they want at a young age, they are experiencing the world for the first time so allow them to make their own decisions and discover who they are. Allow your child to make their decisions on their future. (I realise I haven’t talked about arranged marriage here and I’m 100% not trying to demoralise them. Personally I don’t know much about arranged marriage and I definitely do not have the right to talk about them here. I do know that for some/most people arranged marriages are great and that they are one of the best things in their lives.)

I touched on characters earlier on about how characters are branded as unrelatable if they are aromantic but another thing I see is people say characters who aren’t in a relationship or don’t end up having one throughout the whole book/show/movie etc. are boring. That they are hard to write. I think this angers me the most because I’m dying to read a story, watch a show, etc. where a character isn’t put into a romantic relationship to drive the plot, I can’t relate to most canon couples because that’s not who I am. It’s not just aromantic people this affects because not every person has a romantic relationship during their teenage years or even in the early stages of adulthood. I’m 100% certain that romantic love isn’t what drives a person 100% of the time, why should this be the same for characters?

In relation to this there’s something both myself and many people both aromantic and not need to stop doing. And that’s headcanoning non-human and/or villains as aromantic. I understand, because I’ve personally done it many times, that non-human characters like Angels or Demons are very easy to connect with on an aromantic level (I headcanon Castiel from Supernatural, Crowley from Supernatural, and Lucifer Morningstar from Lucifer as aromantic/Arospec). Headcanoning mostly non-human characters, which I’ve done, says that aromantic people aren’t human and that they just “need to learn to love” and that they “don’t understand” humanity. And headcanoning villains as aromantic tells us that we are bad people, that the reason we are aromantic is because we “don’t deserve” love.

The next thing is alloromantic people denying aromantic headcanons because of their shipping “rights”. What I mean by this is someone telling another who headcanons let’s say Sam Winchester from Supernaturalas aromantic (which I do) that they can’t because of their non-canon ship. Yes there may be many ways that this can be invalidated but using shipping as the reason isn’t okay. If you won’t invalidate another headcanon don’t invalidate ours. We find comfort with our headcanons because we have little to no canon representation (and the ones we do have a stripped of their aro identity *cough* Jughead Jones *cough* Raphael Santiago *cough*).

And lastly I can’t end this post without talking about aro erasure with in fandoms, yes this is about both the Riverdale fandom and Shadowhunters fandom. I’ve talked about this many many many times before, but I have to keep repeating myself because we are still being erased by both fandom and writers. By erasing an aromantic characters aroness you are telling hundreds of aromantic people that we are “abnormal”, that we “don’t deserve” representation. And by taking that character and making them alloromantic you are telling us that you’ve “fixed” the character by stripping them of who they are. Aromantic characters are just as important as any other character. Put yourself in our shoes, if you saw a character that was like you stripped of that part how would you feel? Pretty awful right? Stop doing it to aromantic characters. And stop with the “but aromantic people can still date” rhetoric because that dehumanises aromantic people who don’t date.

I most likely missed something but I’ve talked about the majority of things I’ve noticed a lot of the time.

If you would like to read more about this topic or aromantic posts that relate to this topic here are a few of my previous posts.

There’s nothing I hate more, actually this is probably a lie but go with it, the phrase and the tone of voice that comes with the phrase that has the words “just friends” in it. What I mean is it’s usually used in a phrase similar to “they aren’t ~just friends~” (I hope you read that in the same tone of voice that I was thinking it in) or “we are just friends”. The phrase or even just the two words themselves give me a negative vibe towards platonic relationships. It’s as if the person saying them is saying “oh no they aren’t friends, they are something better, something more.” It’s a phrase that implies that friendships are lesser than romantic relationships.

Saying two people (usually two cisgendered, heterosexual, heteroromantic and white) aren’t “just friends” or that they’re “more than friends” not only has an arophobic undertone to it but is also used to force heteronormativity. This is because people, mostly the older generations, see two people who they think are male and female who are most likely have a platonic relationship but they view it as something romantic, because of their views on what they think is “opposite gender”, when in fact there’s more than two genders and no opposite gender, and how they have probably been taught or have “learnt” that being straight is the “default sexuality”, which again isn’t true because there is no default sexuality. Due to this they’ll always see two people they perceive as male and female as something other than platonic. Because girls and boys can’t “just be friends”.

Not only does this phrase belittle and invalidate most friendships but it also usually invalidates people’s sexualities and genders. I know many of you reading this could be thinking that I’m reaching here. But as someone who is constantly misgendered and perceived as female and straight I have a little experience. Because whenever I had a guy friends, which was always platonic, people always said or thought there was “something more” between us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this term used when two girls are friends, or two boys are friends. Why? Homophobia/Biphobia/Panphobia etc and heteronormativity.

As an aromantic person who values xir friendships a lot, calling them something “lesser than” romantic relationship offends me and belittles the importance of my friendships to me. For one person their romantic partner may be the most important person in that person’s life. But for me it’s my friends. I wouldn’t be where I am now without my friends, even the ones I’m no longer friends with. Platonic relationships are so important and you shouldn’t undermine the value of them. No matter what you’ll always have you friends, they may come and go but they are some of the most important people in your life. Value them. Value them as much as you would value someone who is your romantic partner. Because your romantic partner hasn’t always been there like your friends have.

Here’s a list of the phrases that are similar to “just friends” that really need to go:

“They are more than just friends”

“They aren’t just friends.”

“There’s something more between them.”

There’s probably a dozen more that I’ve forgotten but you’ve gotten the idea of what I’m trying to say.

It’s 2017 can we stop belittling friendships and stop saying that romantic relationships are something more than platonic relationships. They aren’t. End of story.

This post is heavily inspired by the recent musical episode of The Flash, which was a crossover with Supergirl. Just to clear something up this is not a review of this episode but rather my take on a popular trope that found it’s way into this episode’s plot. This trope is the idea that true love’s kiss, true love usually portrayed as romantic love, can break the curse/spell. Which leads to romantic love being shown as the most powerful form of love and how it can conquer anything.

I should say that this episode left me angry and dissatisfied for many reasons other than the reason that inspired this post, but because this isn’t a review episode I won’t go into any details of the other reasons for my anger or dissatisfaction (but if you follow me on Tumblr you would probably know my other reasons, as I liveblogged the episodes).

If you didn’t watch the SuperFlash musical episode I’ll some up what this post was inspired by. Basically the villain of the episode, played by Glee star Darren Criss, puts Barry Allen (The Flash) and Kara Danvers (Supergirl) into a coma and takes them to a hallucination world where they are basically in a musical. Darren Criss’ character’s whole reasoning behind doing this is to prove that Westallen (Barry x Iris)’s love can conquer all and that they are “true love” and the same goes for Karamel (Kara x Mon-El). Basically Iris kissing Barry and Mon-El kissing Kara broke them from this musical dream. I won’t go any further because I don’t want to start a shipping war and this post isn’t about my dissatisfaction of the comparison of Westallen and Karamel.

I want to talk about how harmful this trope is to aromantic people. If “true love” is equal to romantic love, which was portrayed in the SuperFlash episode, even in the majority of Fairytales, and most of the time in shows like Once Upon A Time. If someone like me, an aromatic person, was out into this situation where romantic love is supposed to break the curse/spell or wake us up or whatever the scenario than we’d remain cursed. We’d never wake up. Because we don’t experience romantic attraction so who is going to break the curse/spell/etc if we don’t experience what has been showed in many shows “true love”? That in itself is very invalidating.

The next thing I want to talk about is how this episode, and many other shows/books/movies/etc, use this trope to portray that romantic love is the strongest form of love out there. When it isn’t. Romantic love isn’t the most important and strongest love in the world. It’s not. And it will never be. Romantic love is not stronger than platonic and/or familial love. Every type of love is strong.

I think this is why I love the Maleficent live action movie. They proved that true love is not always romantic and that platonic and familial love is strong as well. It proves that no matter what type of love you feel it’s strong enough to break the curse. That no matter what love you feel it’s strong enough to empower you. This trope, that romantic love is the strongest version of love, isn’t just damaging and invalidating towards aromantic people, it also invalidates non romantic types of relationships. And it’s tropes likes this that lead to people prioritizing romantic relationships over platonic ones.

I’m not saying that this trope needs to die I’m saying that shows/books/etc need to portray “true love” as something other than romantic love. And in SuperFlash‘s case not use it to prove and drive ships into being canon and being together. For Kara, why did they have to use Mon-El, who she broke up with in the recent episode of Supergirl, to prove “true love” or that Mon-El’s love is strong enough to wake Kara? Why couldn’t it be her sister Alex? (don’t get me started on the fact that 2 of the Supergirl main characters, including Alex, weren’t in this episode). Even J’onn J’onzz, who was actually there, who sees Kara like a daughter. Why couldn’t they have used him to wake Kara up? In regards to Barry, even if Barry and Iris hadn’t started dating this would still work as they had been friends since childhood and this could have been portrayed as platonic. So it could have non romantic connections. But even so, why wouldn’t Joe try to save him too? Joe’s like a father to him. I can’t believe Caitlin and Cisco wouldn’t want to save Barry, their close friends and I doubt either of them want to lose another person. I just would like to see this trope used in other ways than proving that romantic love is “stronger” than other versions of love.

To end on a positive note I’m going to list some positive uses of this trope that doesn’t dehumanise aromantic people, or non romantic relationships that I’ve seen:

Maleficent being the one to break Aurora’s sleeping curse – Maleficent (Familial love)

Emma Swan breaking the curse and saving Henry – Once Upon a Time (Familial love)

Regina Mills breaks the one year memory loss curse – Once Upon a Time (Familial love)